The holidays make us watch things we would not enjoy throughout the rest of the year. Rarely, for example, am I so into the thousands of smalltown girls who have grown up to be callous big city women with smarmy Hallmark-bad boyfriends who live in flats with white walls and modern art and a conspicuously missing Christmas tree. The girl heads home to a place called Autumn Hill or Christmas River or Flannel Bend and helps her dad run his café with his absurdly attractive 50ish girlfriend (mom would have wanted him to be happy before she got hit by that snowplow). While refilling sugars callous big city woman bumps into her childhood love who is now a charmingly sad widowed plumber who maintains a glimmer of hope for Christmas miracles. Everyone is good-natured. Even the city boyfriend, having just purveyed the sale of an orphanage’s land to regional developers, oozed into becalm by the knowledge that the orphans will all grow up to be employed at the subsequent corporation’s call center. And you feel bad for him, because when that girl heads home, well, he doesn’t know what’s coming.
For all of this, we can thank Charles Dickens. With A Christmas Carol, Dickens may have been the first in the modern era to inject society with Christmas cheer. He did this to bring back the Christmas mood of times that were already ancient when he was around. An English medieval Christmas was a twelve-day fest of booze, food, and hijinks meant to carry forth the midwinter reveling season, which blasted off in early November and ended in February. This left the remainder of February for sober reflection and the delirium tremens, until Mardi Gras came along and saved humanity from reality with another party and Venetian masks.
Dickens’ timeless Christmas tale A Christmas Carol is such a part of our Christmas culture that it has been remade by the Muppets, Mickey Mouse, and Captain Picard. It’s so popular, that there are movies and books about Charles Dickens writing the book. You rarely see movies about Homer tossing his stone tablet into the Ionian Sea in frustration and being chased down by creditors. But the story around A Christmas Carol is very real. Dickens was under a deadline, his wife was pregnant, his latest book installments were getting ho-hum reviews. The pressure was on and Dickens only had a few weeks to deliver. And we all know what happened. Scrooge. Marley. Three ghosts. Bah to the humbug. Tiny Tim. And good ole Bob Cratchit.
The very fact that Dickens needed a drink after he was done writing this book comes straight out of the last scene. Scrooge, relieved, having avoided hell and an eternity of listening to Jacob Marley saying “I told you so” through a jaw sling, says:
“A Merry Christmas, Bob! A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a year! I'll raise your salary, and endeavor to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon over a bowl of Smoking Bishop, Bob!”
We’re happy about Bob and shed a tear for Tiny Tim (who I fear grew up to call himself Big Tim). We’re elated by Scrooge’s redemption. But what thrills us beyond all is the Smoking Bishop.
The Smoking Bishop is a hot punch drink with a port and wine base that brings together nutmeg, sugar, and allspice cloves to make it the world’s most Christmassy drink without the prefix yule- or the suffix -nog. Punches show up in the 1650s and only grew in popularity over time. This popularity is easily explained when you learn that its base was rum, brandy, or port, and that there was a giant bowl of it, so instead of one alcoholic drink you had a whole bowl of alcoholic drinks. It was a favorite of society men in clubs and other people who wanted to forget that more lice lived in their pubic hair than people did in Europe. The punchbowl the Bishop and other punches were served in often commemorated an event. Sometimes that event was the one in process when drinking from it. It’s nice to see drinkers get in on the meta fun.
However, by the mid-19th century, punch also had a bit of a bad reputation. Well, drinking had a bad reputation and punch was guilty by association. The daily binge drinking Britain had been enjoying for six or so hundred years was finally getting its day in court. For years and years, gin and rum had caused violence and death and had ruined lives. So as a result, a few hundred years later, people in Britain began to note that drinking had a downside.
A leader in the area of pointing out the bad side of fun things was an eighteenth-century illustrator named William Hogarth. Hogarth was an artist who created a series of morality paintings to satirize the hedonism of the 18th century. (Because what great art really needs is morality). In his illustrations, he attacks promiscuity, sexual deviance, binge drinking, and all other things that people derive enjoyment from. You’d think that in an age when there was a solid chance of dying from things called ‘horseshoehead’ or ‘rising in the lights’ that people might just let you pound hot booze from a bowl depicting the sad events of your life and leave you be. But no. There was William Hogarth, Sir Buzzkill, waiting to judge you in illustration. It was only a matter of time before Hogarth took aim at punch and he did so in his painting ‘A Midnight Modern Conversation’. This painting features several high society men boozed out of their minds around empty punch bowls. One guy has set himself on fire. Another guy has fallen on the ground and broken a bottle. There are men passed out and falling apart. It looks like a great time. But the intended message is clear – punch leads to excessive drinking and that is bad for you. Some people listened. Other people didn’t. Others still - in a lovely nod to Hogarth - commemorated their punchbowls with a picture of Hogarth’s Midnight Conversation.
Hogarth’s eighteenth-century satire and commentary was easily applicable to the blurry-eyed shenanigans of the 19th century. The temperance movement that popped up in the mid-1800s agreed with Hogarth wholeheartedly and many Brits went teetotaler. One guy who did not was Charles Dickens. Dickens was a critic of abstention and a staunch supporter of moderation – a thing which he observed with dedication. He started the day with fresh cream and two tablespoons of rum, celebrated noon with a sherry cobbler, a pint of champagne at 3 pm, and more sherry in the evening. He was an avid enjoyer of pubs and taverns. Dickens liked his drink.
Dickens was also known to enjoy punch and the Smoking Bishop. But the fact that Ebenezer Scrooge shares it with Bob Cratchit says more than we might initially see. First, the name. The Smoking Bishop is an Ecclesiastic. The Ecclesiastics is a group of punch cocktails mockingly named after members of the clergy. The Smoking Bishop, the Smoking Pope, the Rich Pope, the Smoking Archbishop, the Smoking Beadle, and the Smoking Cardinal. These protestant-borne cocktails provide us not only with a good, solid drink, but a way to make fun of the Catholic Church. In protestant countries such as Sweden, the punchbowl was shaped like a bishop’s miter, with which you could bludgeon a nearby Catholic who was telling you to stop drinking. Since a revival in Catholicism and the Church of England was undoubtedly linked to the 19th century temperance movement, it’s possible that in this last scene Dickens is taking aim at that movement. Moreover, to share a bowl of punch was an act of community and camaraderie between men of the same social standing in clubs and taverns. Ebenezer is inviting Bob into the fold. I hope Bob could cover the yearly dues.
We’re going to celebrate the reveling season and hiding from the freezing cold weather with a bowl of the Smoking Bishop. With punch, you’ve got to go big or go home. It’s a big bowl of Liquid Happy and it’s going to take a little time. The original recipe was labor-intensive and took over 24 hours to make and required four servants who had nothing better to do and who you owned. Since you don’t have that kind of time, the kind of money to hire servants, and I’d like you to keep reading this substack, I’m suggesting a boiled-down recipe that’ll get you seeing the Ghosts of Drunks Past and Present in under 2 hours.
Ingredients
750 ml ruby port
750 ml red wine
1 cup water
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon ginger, freshly grated
1/4 teaspoon allspice, ground
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg, freshly grated
4 oranges
20 cloves, whole
A bowl with a picture on it
No ghosts in sight
Garnish: clove-studded orange slice
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Yes, that’s right, this one calls for a preheated oven – get over it. Pierce and stud each orange with five cloves. They should look like the ocean mine that came ashore in Gilligan’s Island. Place the oranges in a baking dish and roast until lightly browned all over, 60–90 minutes. You might be annoyed at this point because of all the roasting and peeling. So, first of all, your house will smell awesome, like a high school bathroom cleaned with orange-scented Ajax. Second, we’ll assume you have some extra wine laying around. Pick that up, bring the bottle to your lips, open them, and then point your face at the ceiling for 40 seconds. Bad mood solved.
Add port, wine, water, sugar and spices to a saucepan, and simmer over low heat. Slice oranges in half and squeeze juice into the wine and port mixture. Serve in a punch bowl (with any picture on it you want), and ladle into individual glasses. Or ladle into your glass and watch A Christmas Carol. Drink heartily. Drink until you meet the Ghost of Drunks Future. And tomorrow, when you meet the Ghost of Hangovers Present, give us his regards.
Great read. Your description of Hogarth's A Midnight Modern Conversation reminded me of an evening of absinthe filled merriment where I set a table on fire. With the absinthe. The results were both tragic and hilarious. As for Dickens, he's one of the writers that I've grown to appreciate the most as I've matured. I try to include one of his books in my reading every year. This year it's Bleak House, which sounds rather cheery I must say.